NORTH KOREA INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTATION PROJECT E-DOSSIER #9 ZHOU ENLAI AND CHINA’S RESPONSE TO THE KOREAN WAR NKIDP E-DOSSIER Introduction Zhou Enlai and China’s Response to the Korean War 1 by Charles Kraus *** DOCUMENT NO. 1 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Bulganin, 13 April 1950 4 DOCUMENT NO. 2 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Wang Jiaxiang, 6 May 1950 5 DOCUMENT NO. 3 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Bulganin, 13 May 1950 6 DOCUMENT NO. 4 Telegram from the Party Central Committee to Gao Gang, 11 July 1950 6 DOCUMENT NO. 5 Telegram from the Party Central Committee to Gao Gang, 18 July 1950 7 DOCUMENT NO. 6 Report from Zhou Enlai and Nie Rongzhen to Mao Zedong, 22 July 1950 8 DOCUMENT NO. 7 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 23 August 1950 9 DOCUMENT NO. 8 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Gao Gang, 3 September 1950 9 DOCUMENT NO. 9 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 20 September 1950 10 DOCUMENT NO. 10 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 29 September 1950 11 DOCUMENT NO. 11 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Kim Il Sung, 1 October 1950 11 DOCUMENT NO. 12 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 2 October 1950 12 i www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp NKIDP e-Dossier no. 9 DOCUMENT NO. 13 12 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Gao Gang, etc., 4 October 1950 DOCUMENT NO. 14 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 4 October 1950 13 DOCUMENT NO. 15 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 5 October 1950 13 DOCUMENT NO. 16 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Ni Zhiliang, 7 October 1950 14 DOCUMENT NO. 17 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Stalin, 14 October 1950 14 DOCUMENT NO. 18 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Chai Junwu, 19 October 1950 15 DOCUMENT NO. 19 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi, 29 October 1950 16 DOCUMENT NO. 20 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Chai Junwu, 8 November 1950 16 DOCUMENT NO. 21 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Chai Junwu, etc., 8 November 1950 17 DOCUMENT NO. 22 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Chai Junwu, 12 November 1950 17 DOCUMENT NO. 23 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong and Others, 15 November 1950 18 DOCUMENT NO. 24 Telegram from Mao Zedong to Stalin, 15 November 1950 18 DOCUMENT NO. 25 Telegram from Mao Zedong to Peng Dehuai, 17 November 1950 19 DOCUMENT NO. 26 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Wu Xiuquan and Qiao Guanhua, 3 December 19 1950 ii www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp Zhou Enlai and China’s Response to the Korean War DOCUMENT NO. 27 20 Draft Agreement by the Party Central Committee on Establishing a Sino- North Korea Joint Headquarters, 8 December 1950 DOCUMENT NO. 28 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong, 8 December 1950 21 DOCUMENT NO. 29 Telegram from [Party] Central Committee to Wu Xiuquan and Qiao 22 Guanhua, 8 December 1950 DOCUMENT NO. 30 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong, 9 December 1950 22 DOCUMENT NO. 31 Letter from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong, 9 December 1950 23 DOCUMENT NO. 32 Report from Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong, 12 December 1950 23 DOCUMENT NO. 33 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Wu Xiuquan and Qiao Guanhua, 13 December 26 1950 DOCUMENT NO. 34 Telegram from Zhou Enlai to Wu Xiuquan and Qiao Guanhua, 16 December 26 1950 iii www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp NKIDP e-Dossier no. 9 Zhou Enlai and China’s Response to the Korean War by Charles Kraus SINCE THE LATE 1980S AND EARLY 1990S, scholarly interest in China’s involvement in the Korean War has been steady and unwavering, nurtured by a constant stream of official Chinese documentary publications.1 The publication of the first three volumes of Zhou Enlai’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the PRC in 2008, however, has opened a new chapter in the diplomatic and military history of the Korean War, as well as in the study of China’s response to the outbreak of that conflict.2 The translated documents included in this collection provide new details of Chinese aid to North Korea in the summer of 1950. Prior to the entry of Chinese troops in October 1950, Zhou Enlai, for example, coordinated the supply of materials to North Korea via Andong (Dandong) and other border cities. According to Zhou’s papers, North Korea even requested that it be allowed to build storehouses in China for the depositing of material aid from fraternal countries. Kim Il Sung also requested that he be allowed to temporarily stow away North Korean factory equipment inside of China so as to avoid the loss of this equipment to American bombs. These documents demonstrate that, even if China had voiced its reservations against Kim Il Sung’s request to launch an invasion of South Korea, China still behaved generously and as an ally in the weeks immediately following June 25. Acting upon North Korean requests, Zhou Enlai also oversaw the return of ethnic Koreans from China back to North Korea after June 1950. Their numbers were relatively limited in the summer and fall of 1950, but the return of ethnic Koreans was an extensive process, coordinated by all levels of the Chinese government and military. Once inside North Korea, the returnees became immediately involved in the Korean War, serving as doctors, nurses, technicians, and drivers, among other critical positions, on behalf of the North Korean government. These documents thus demonstrate that although the return of ethnic Koreans who 1 Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 2, The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947-1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 350-370; Sergei N. Goncharov, John Wilson Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993); Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Press, 2011); Xiaobing Li, Allan R. Millet, and Bin Yu, eds., Mao’s Generals Remember Korea (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001); Allan R. Millet, The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came from the North (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010); Shen Zhihua, “Sino- North Korean Conflict and its Resolution during the Korean War,” trans. Dong Gil Kim and Jeffrey Becker, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 14/15 (Winter 2003-Spring 2004): 9-24; Russel Spurr, Enter the Dragon: China at War in Korea (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989); William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950-1953 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Zhang Xiaoming, Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea. (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002). 2 See Adam Cathcart and Charles Kraus, “The Bonds of Brotherhood: New Evidence on Sino-North Korean Exchanges, 1950-1954,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 27-51 and Shen Zhihua, “Ba duanlian de lishi liantiao lianjie qilai—Jianguo yilai zhou enlai wengao (1-3 ce) de shiliao jiazhi shicui” (“Linking up the Broken Historical Chains: An Excerpt of Valuable Historical Materials from Zhou Enlai’s Manuscripts since the Founding of the PRC, Volumes 1-3”), Dang de Wenxian no. 4 (2008): 59- 68. 1 www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp Zhou Enlai and China’s Response to the Korean War would take part in the war effort is typically periodized as a pre-Korean War phenomenon, repatriation in fact continued well into the autumn of 1950. The documents also underscore how China’s piecemeal response to the Korean War shifted as the autumn of 1950 set upon the peninsula. Significantly, the collection includes cables in which the Chinese offered tactical advice to Kim Il Sung for conducting operations and winning a “protracted war” in September and October. Zhou Enlai’s advice, however, came at a time when North Korea’s military position was rapidly deteriorating, and the series of exchanges between Zhou and Ambassador Ni Zhiliang (who was responsible for conveying Zhou’s remarks to Kim Il Sung) reflect China’s growing uneasiness at the time. In addition to offering advice, then, Zhou began to send Chinese military observers into Korea and invited North Korean leader Pak Il-u to China to receive more detailed reports of the situation on the ground. Zhou Enlai’s Manuscripts offer a clear window into the evolution of Chinese thinking and strategy vis-à-vis the Korean War, helping scholars to understand how and why Chinese troops were ultimately dispatched to Korea. Of course, much of China’s decision-making at this time was shaped and influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the Soviet Union. Reflecting the nature of the Sino-Soviet alliance in 1950, Zhou Enlai’s Manuscripts also provide new evidence on collaboration and military relations between China and the Soviet Union during the Korean War. Several letters addressed to Stalin, Nikolai Bulganin, and Wang Jiaxiang, the Chinese Ambassador to the USSR, for example, highlight that the Chinese sought both the entry of the Soviet Air Force into the Korean War as well as greater military aid and training from the Soviet Union for Chinese soldiers. The latter half of the collection contains more than a dozen documents dating from after the entry of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) into Korea in October 1950.